Facts about Baseball

he first known reference to the word “baseball” was in a 1744 publication by children’s publisher John Newberry called A Little Pretty Pocket-Book.

The New York Yankees were the first baseball team to wear numbers on their backs, in the 1920s. They initially wore numbers based on the batting order. Babe Ruth always hit third, so he was number 3.

In 2008, Dr. David A. Peters found that sliding headfirst into a base is faster than a feet-first slide.

he oldest baseball park still in use is Fenway Park, the home field of the Boston Red Sox, which debuted in 1912.

While baseball games today last about 3 hours, the fastest game ever played in major league history lasted just 51 minutes on September 28, 1919. The New York Giants defeated the Philadelphia Phillies 6-1 at the Polo Grounds.

The first pro baseball game ever to be aired on television was on August 26, 1939. It was a doubleheader between Brooklyn and Cincinnati.

Baseball fans ate 21,357,316 hot dogs and 5,508,887 sausages during the 2014 major league season.

There is a rule in baseball that before every game, an umpire should remove the shine from the new baseballs by rubbing them with mud from a creek in Burlington County, New Jersey.

The first U.S. president to throw the ceremonial first ball was William Howard Taft (a former semipro baseball player) on April 14, 1910. American presidents, except Jimmy Carter, have been throwing out the first ball on Opening Day ever since.

The longest game on record was between the Chicago White Sox and the visiting Milwaukee Brewers on May 9, 1984. The game lasted 8 hours 6 minutes and went 25 innings.

Since 1983, major league players have been required to wear helmets with at least one earflap to protect the side of the head facing the pitcher. The latest helmets also provide increased protection to the back of the head.

Only one major league player has been killed by a pitched ball. Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians was fatally hit in the head on August 16, 1920, by a ball thrown by Yankee pitcher Carl Mays.

The first-ever radio broadcast of a major league baseball game occurred on August 5, 1921, by radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh. The first place Pirates beat the last place Philadelphia Phillies 8-5 at Forbes Field. It also featured the game’s first live play-by-play announcer, 26-year-old Harold Arlin.